WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said on Friday he will retire next year and threw his weight behind New York Senator Chuck Schumer to replace him as leader after he leaves office.

Reid will stay in his post for another 22 months but his announcement positions Schumer, a New Yorker and Wall Street ally, as his heir apparent as the party gears up to try to regain control of the Senate in elections next year.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said on Friday he will not seek re-election next year, leaving Congress after 30 years and complicating Democrats’ efforts to retake control of the Senate in 2016.

Reid, who represents Nevada, said in a video message that his decision to retire from the Senate was not due to a recent accident or his party’s loss of control of the chamber in the November congressional elections.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama will host Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the White House next month for talks expected to focus on their joint response to China’s rising power and efforts to finalize a major Asia-Pacific trade pact.

Abe, who will spend eight days in the United States, will go to the White House on April 28 to discuss a range of economic and security issues as well as a formal state dinner, the White House said on Monday.

WASHINGTON, March 20 (Reuters) – Child car seat maker Graco
will pay a $10 million fine for failing to give timely notice of
car seats with defective buckles, ending a federal investigation
into the nation’s largest recall of child seats, the U.S.
regulators and the company said on Friday.

Graco Children’s Products Inc, a unit of Newell Rubbermaid
Inc, agreed to pay $3 million now and spend the
remaining $7 million on efforts to improve child safety, they
said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Tokyo police are investigating death threats against U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy and another American diplomat, according to media reports.

The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo received the threats by telephone last month, with several phone calls made by an English-speaking man, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported Tuesday, citing a Tokyo police official.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An American healthcare worker who tested positive for the Ebola virus while working in Sierra Leone is seriously ill, U.S. health officials said on Friday after evaluating the patient.

The patient arrived in the United States for treatment earlier on Friday and was admitted to the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s high-security containment facility in Maryland, the NIH said. The patient is the 11 person with the deadly virus treated in the United States, though the last known case was in November.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An American healthcare worker who tested positive for the Ebola virus while working in Sierra Leone arrived in the United States for treatment on Friday, U.S. health officials said.

The patient, who was transported in isolation by chartered aircraft, was admitted to the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s high-security containment facility in Maryland, NIH said in a statement.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Controversy over emails could overshadow the launch of Hillary Clinton’s expected presidential campaign after a leading Republican critic raised the prospect on Wednesday of congressional hearings into her use of personal email for work when she was America’s top diplomat.

Representative Trey Gowdy, a Republican of South Carolina, said he would like Clinton to testify in Congress by April about using a personal email address instead of a government one while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

BERLIN/WASHINGTON, March 4 (Reuters) – The International
Monetary Fund and Group of Seven leading economic powers on
Wednesday praised the Ukrainian government’s determination to
reform the economy against all odds, with the G7 saying Kiev’s
new draft budget should put it on track for an IMF-led bailout.

Ukraine’s parliament approved on Monday a raft of IMF-backed
amendments to its 2015 draft budget that Kiev hopes will help it
clinch a $17.5 billion bailout from the IMF, whose board is
expected to meet next week.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senator Barbara Mikulski, the longest-serving female senator in U.S. history, on Monday announced that she will retire at the end of her term, setting up a contest among possible successors in the heavily Democratic state of Maryland.

The top Democrat on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, Mikulski, 78, told reporters in Baltimore that she would serve out her remaining two years in office. She has served in Congress for nearly 40 years.